First Impressions of Santiago

Right before Christmas I flew to the huge city of Santiago. I traveled here to visit my best friend, whom is on his Erasmus, and to celebrate Christmas of course. “Celebrate”… Because actually we ended up eating spaghetti with a bottle of wine and watching clips on youtube.
The reason for it being that we had to wake up at 03:00 AM for our flight to Puerto Natales to then continue to the remarkable Torres Del Paine (more about that soon.)

Coming back on my first impressions about Santiago, I had the luck my amigo Denzel lived there for over 5 months. As a result I had someone who knew his way around and who spoke the local language in order to discover the city. The first day we relaxed a bit and went to the huge shopping mall just outside his apartment, which is pretty impressive, to gear myself up with a a sim card for my travels. Afterwards we had some delicious sushi, which you might know is one of my favourites!

It’s a big, loud and very busy city where the issue of smog is prominent. When we got up San Cristobal we could clearly see the smog hanging over the city, surrounded by the massive Andes mountains. I’m not sure to which city I can compare it but it had something unique. It hasn’t got that many skyscrapers or high buildings, but it does have a lot of big buildings (malls, hotels, offices..). What stands out is the one big skyscraper, that we still have to check out, which apparently is the biggest one in all of Latin America…

The second day, we went out for dinner in a cosy Restaurant/Bar where I had “Provoleta – Pollo al pil pil” (Chicken with cheese and mushrooms), the best mushrooms I ever had! (No blogging language. – I rarely like mushrooms but these one were pretty delicious). If you’re ever in Santiago and looking for a nice place to have dinner, I highly recommend this to you, a typical Chilean restaurant! 😉

We also went up to a Hill “San Cristóbal Hill”, with the Téléfrique (Spanish word for Cable Car) Definitely worth the view!
You can combine it with the Chilean National Zoo, it’s at the foot of the hill

Terremoto (Earthquake), The famous drink – you can’t really call it a cocktail and keep a straight face – of Chile.
It’s a really strong cocktail, but a must to try when in Chile! 😉

Things to do:

San Cristóbal Hill – Amazing viewpoint 300 meters above Santiago (850m)The Skyscraper – “Gran Torre Santiago”Santa Lucia HillSantiago Metropolitan Cathedral and Plaza de ArmasLa Moneda Palace –Museum of Memory of Human RightsChilean National Museum of Fine ArtsChilean National Zoo – At the foot of the San Cristóbal Hill
(not such an impressive zoo, but if you have the time or extra days to fill up.)